


If One Has Not Dined Well

by ifeelbetter



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Food, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-11
Updated: 2010-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:06:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeelbetter/pseuds/ifeelbetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times that Danny showed he Really Cares about food. Steve thinks it's hilarious and then...not so hilarious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If One Has Not Dined Well

**Author's Note:**

> I SHOULD BE ASLEEP AND NOT WRITING AND I SHOULD DEFINITELY NOT HAVE MAINLINED THE SHOW AND THEN ALL FICS ON THE INTERNETS. I MAKE TERRIBLE LIFE CHOICES, WHAT.

**I. Coffee.**

Danny took one sip of the coffee and spit it right back into the cup. "This," he said, "is disgusting."

"What?" Steve asked, honestly perplexed. 

"It's not _instant_ , is it? Tell me you didn't leave a mug full of instant on your counter-top. That's, like, an unexploded bomb. You could kill someone with that."

"You come into my house at the crack of dawn--"

"It's half past nine, you layabout," Danny scoffed. 

"-- _at the crack of dawn_ on a Saturday and you insult my coffee? Mine, not yours? The coffee no one said you could drink?" Steve grabbed the mug back and drained it in one long gulp.

"I'm gonna buy you a nice cappuccino. Then we'll talk about me throwing out all your processed bullshit," Danny said, clapping Steve on the shoulder.

Steve had to admit -- his coffee did taste a great deal like piss.

**II. Potato Chips.**

Grace rolled her eyes and kept playing with her cell phone--pink with even pinker rhinestones plastered across every available surface--while Danny gesticulated wildly at the front register. Steve could see the hand gestures over the top of the lines of shelves between the front window and the register. 

He pushed the door open--it had one of those annoying bells attached that whined--and immediately could hear Danny's rant. 

"I'm just saying that _in my day_ \--" (and any rant that had Danny reminiscing about "in his day" was bound to be both highly unreasonable and highly charged) "--you could buy a bag of chips for a quarter. _A quarter_ , right? And now you've--what--tripled the price? And there's all this air."

Steve approached the front register. The cashier looked sleepy more than anything else. He obviously had heard his fair share of ridiculous complaints and, speaking from Steve's dispassionate viewpoint, not much interest in whether Danny's kid was getting the best experience from her Lay's potato chips.

"You could write the company," the kid suggested. 

"Maybe I will. Maybe I _will_ write the company because it is a travesty that the customer is paying for a bag that's half empty to begin with and--"

Steve tapped him on the shoulder. Danny nodded absently at him, a sort of quasi-incline of the head, but didn't stop his harangue. 

"--you're selling this product to _children_ , mind you--"

Steve gently--but firmly--turned Danny so he was facing away from the cashier and started prodding him towards the door. The harangue continued. 

"--who had no _idea_ that they could be so thoroughly betrayed by corporations they trusted--"

And the bell over the door whined again as Steve pushed Danny through, Grace following behind.

**III. Biscuits.**

"I can tell you're about to start yelling," Steve said, "but I really couldn't tell you why."

"So you don't see a problem with this at all, then?" Danny asked, incredulous. He poked the biscuit. 

"It's a _biscuit_. What do you want from it, tricks?" Steve asked. 

"No, god no, this isn't a _biscuit_ \--where are you from? Were you raised by wolves?" Danny asked, pushing the plate away from him. "Biscuits, right, they have to be more substantial. A good biscuit anchors a meal, right, it's like the center of gravity. The other things--the gravy, oh my god, sometimes, the _gravy_ , with the chunks of, like sausage in there--it's all just superfluous."

"Superfluous."

"Fuck you, I know big words. The other stuff is fucking _superfluous_ because it's the biscuit that's holding everything down. It's the planet and everything else is a fucking meteor," Danny said. 

There was something about the earnestness of Danny's expression--the way his hands kept coming back to his lips, like talking about food wasn't enough without some kind of tactile contact--that made Steve actually listen. 

"You're from _New Jersey_ ," Chin pointed out. "What do you know about biscuits?"

"More than you pineapple-fanciers, that's for damn sure," Danny said, his attention moving away from Steve--where it had been focused more intensely than usual during his ode to biscuits.

Steve pushed the one on his plate away as well. If he couldn't have what Danny was describing-- _fuck my life_ , he thought.

**IV. Burgers**

It had become a running joke, the way Danny would rant and rave about some item of food that the rest of them had always passed by without commenting upon. They laughed but he was always right--their coffee was a new experience since he brought the grinder in. And the biscuits he made--he claimed he had roots that gave him some sort of heritage claim to the things--were actually to die for. 

So Steve expected--he was almost _hoping_ to incite--a rant about the crappy Taco stand they stopped at for lunch. But Danny didn't mention a thing. 

Steve ordered them both burgers. At the Taco stand. Danny raised an eyebrow but he was too busy shooting the shit, chatting about the game, to make a particular point of it.

"Oh my god," Danny said, after taking his first bite, "this is, like, an art piece of fast food burger classicism. I could eat nothing but this burger for the rest of my life and I would die a happy man."

And then he groaned. 

Steve wished that Danny cared a little less about food. It made his own burger catch in his throat, just enough to leave him coughing and spluttering. 

**V. Apple...thing**

There was a particularly rough patch a couple months into the new partnership. Steve and Danny's bickering was getting rougher around the edges as they genuinely pushed at the edges of what they were willing to take from each other. It was becoming apparent to both that they were willing to take more than seemed normal. Much more than seemed healthy. 

And the bickering got worse. 

And then it got even worse than that. 

Steve felt strongly about things like "manning up" and "having it out" so he showed up at Danny's pigsty for a mutual exchange of manpain one weekend. He brought a bottle of something--tequila? Possible whiskey? He hadn't really known the appropriate drink for _So you're on my mind a whole lot of the time and sometimes I think I might have an unhealthy love for your ridiculous hair and that makes me say mean things_ and it made him cringe right down through his soul that he was having all these ridiculous feelings. 

But alcohol. That seemed to be the appropriate "man up" thing to do. 

So he knocked on the door. 

Danny opened it wearing an apron. 

"What the ever-loving fuck," Steve said, his jaw dropping. 

The apron said "Kiss the chef." There was sugar on Danny's nose. 

"OK, fine, yes, I'm ridiculous," Danny agreed, having the decency to look equal parts ashamed and indignant, "But just you wait till you've tasted it."

And Steve had to follow him back through the hallway because that sentence wasn't making much sense.

There, right on the sorry excuse for a counter, was an apple...thing. Maybe a pie? What's a pie shaped thing with apples in it if it's not a pie?

"What is that?" Steve asked. He tried not to use his will-that-explode? voice but that was the tone that insisted on shaping his question. 

"It's Apples Over Honey-Caramel Pastry," Danny said helpfully. "My mom's recipe."

"You don't cook," Steve said, moving down the mental list of WTFery he had established in a cluster when Danny opened the door. 

"Not usually, no," Danny agreed. "Guess I was feeling homesick or something." He pulled a spoon out of the sink, rinsed it under the tap, and handed it to Steve. 

"You don't even wash dishes and you're baking?" Steve continued, taking the spoon. 

"It's an anomaly," Danny said. "Taste it."

And Steve pushed the spoon right into the thing, right out of the pan-thingy, while it was still cooling. It felt inappropriate and wrong and like some universalized Mother from a 50's propriety video was about to descend on him with a wagging finger. 

It didn't matter _at all_ once the spoon hit his tongue.

It was a sublime experience, that spoon hitting his taste buds. 

So it sort of made sense that Steve pushed Danny back against the counter and stuck his tongue down his throat. Probably. In some sort of ... abstract sense.


End file.
